Research Interests: I came to know art in a house without fine art. In my parents' home, objects and images were valued for how they were loved and labored over, with no other apparent hierarchy. Bull horns hung next to my grandfather's beautiful watercolor landscapes, cheaply framed children's drawings beside wheat stalk weavings, calendar cut-outs from years long past shared equal billing with oil paintings, and for reasons I still can't explain, a paper-mache Rodney Dangerfield sat on our living room couch for years. Though my family moved frequently- no army brat, just the daughter of parents affected by equal parts gypsy blood, wanderlust, and optimism- these same items adorned each new place and made it feel like home. There was, for me, a palpable tension between the pedestrian nature of the objects and the heightened value they attained through our appreciation of them. In their eclectic sincerity, they form the basis of my visual language. These varied images are used to describe systems of knowledge that fall outside of traditional, scientific ones- ways of knowing that are intuitive or inherited and often fall outside the bounds of reason.

Awards:

Faculty/Student Summer Research Grant, DePauw University, 2015

Creative Renewal Fellowship, Arts Council of Indianapolis, 2013

Special Projects:

The Elephant in the Room, 2015, collaboration with Jeannette Johnson-Licon of Student Services to create a mobile Plexiglass sculpture of an elephant to open dialogue about sexualized violence on campus.

The Greencastle Re::Paint Project, 2015, a community-wide paint recycling project resulting in over 1000 gallons of latex paint being remixed and made available to the community. All proceeds were donated to the local K-12 arts programs and DePauw students created a mural.